firefighters

This is pretty cool, especially since you don't usually get to see or read about stuff like this until you're watching a featurette on a DVD set.

For those that didn't catch last night's episode of Rescue Me ("Disease," S05E12), the opening scene featured a very cool fire sequence in which Tommy, Franco, Black Shawn, and Mike had to escape a burning apartment hallway. The entire sequence was eerily cut to the high-pitched vocals of Duffy and her song "Syrup & Honey," but what came across as most impressive was how real it all looked.

Rescue Me fans have been waiting far too long for this news. It was announced yesterday that the FX trademark drama will finally begin airing its 22-episode fifth season on Tuesday, April 7th at 10PM ET. And yes, the season will air uninterrupted, with the finale scheduled to air on September 8th.

Season four, which finished back in September 2007, received some of the drama's poorest critical reviews of the series to date. Season five, which has been delayed by over a year because of the WGA Strike, promises to be much better.

FX President John Landgraf said that, "...the quality of episodes...are some of the best they've ever produced," and when I spoke with Denis Leary by phone last June, he said the opening six episodes of the new season was some of the best stuff they'd written yet.

Excited? I sure as hell am. Keep reading though because the news gets even better.

I miss watching television. I miss electricity and I'm sick of taking cold showers. Most of you may have noticed by now that I never got around to posting a review for this week's episode of Rescue Me, "Satisfaction." Well I have a good reason. I left work this past Tuesday at around 6:30. It was just like any other night... until my subway train stalled and I was stuck on it for two hours. After two empty trains finally pulled up behind us, my fellow passengers and myself used the empty cars and trekked through them back to the previous station we had passed. I was then forced to find another station, in a neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. I took a train that I never take and it was only able to get me to within 12 blocks of my apartment. So I walked... and finally I made it home. Success!

Denis Leary's controversial show focusing on the lives of firefighters will return for another season in the spring of 2007. Ratings for the FX show have improved this season, and there's more attention than ever being focused on the drama right now (mostly due to the now infamous "rape" episode).

The order is for 13 episodes, which might seem like a little, but this is cable, and the first three seasons of Rescue Me have been 13 episodes as well.

(S03E06) I'm honestly not even sure how to react. After this episode, Rescue Me has officially knocked off Nip/Tuck as my favorite show on F/X. Sorry Shield fans (and I'm one of them), but Chiklis and Co. can't hold a candle to Leary and his boys. This was arguably a perfect episode. It was just flawless. But no sense in going through all the wonderful minor things that happened, and there were plenty. Let's get right to the point: Marisa Tomei is smoking hot.

That's what he tellsEntertainment Weekly. He would love to end the show by having half the cast die in the last episode.

"I'd love to do a fifth season where people think you're doing 13 episodes, and, in week 6, there's a giant fire and half the crew's dead and the show's over...you tune in and the &%$#@! things gone. I don't think they'll ever let us. But that would be great television."

And controversial television. Not that Rescue Me is a stranger to controversy. Just a couple of weeks ago was the now infamous episode where Leary's character raped (?) his ex-wife and she seemed to enjoy it (?). I put the question marks there because I don't watch the show, and people are split about what exactly happened.

You know, I thought this show had been
either canceled months ago or had just been forgotten about, but it's good news to hear that the Denis Leary show will return to FX on
May 30. Thief, the Andre Braugher drama, will end its run on May 2, and the network will run movies and
specials til Rescue Me returns.

Lots of heavy stuff coming this season, as well as a multi-episode
guest appearance by Susan Sarandon.